not to be
as a side note, this post was sort of formed because i watched V for Vendetta last night, which, if you haven’t seen, is all about the dangers of passive conformity and how it can lead to dogmatic governments and totalitarianism. more on the movie in a separate post.
although it hasn’t always been incredibly obvious or vocalized, i struggle with discipline and conformity, both from self and authority. although i did very well in school (class valedictorian), i was not a Perfect Student. i turned in hundreds of assignments late. in high school, i skipped a lot. in college, i just didn’t go. i do what needs to be done, but i’d rather figure it out myself than have someone else teach me how to do it. i haven’t taken any professional classes to learn how to do things because i find most classes a waste of time, catering to the LCD.
with my body, i have zero discipline when it comes to working out/excercising. i do it when i feel like it. thank the universe i’ve never had a weight problem, because if i did, i’d never be able to manage it. i stick to a strict vegegatrian diet, but for me that’s not about discipline. i have no interest in eating meat.
sure, lots of people are self-taught and are irritated by authority. this does not make me special. lots of people rebel against society’s laws in their own little ways, whether it’s showing up late and leaving early from their 9-2-5, or doing illegal drugs even though on the surface they’re squeaky clean GAP ads, or reading soft-core porn before they go to sleep at night.
what i don’t like is that my inner rebellion against any sort of conformity or Group Think is uncomfortable. even the most lovable and benign, like a burning man theme camp, or formal classes, or clubs – sororities, activity groups, ballet – all send a twinge of loathing through my body. i’m not really a loner, though, and not incredibly independent. i actually follow most of society’s rules, and think the world would be a better place if most others did too. so what is it?
it has been ingrained in me that blind conformity is a sign of weakness, so anything that contains hints of conformity that seem to be more about following along than really making sense culturally makes me agitated. as a child, i fought really hard to conform and it never quite worked. by the time i was a teenager, i discovered that i no longer cared much for trying to keep up, but those younger years, those ‘tween years, when i so desperately wanted to conform but couldn’t, mostly for economic reasons – those were painful. i shoplifted things that i couldn’t afford. i played suck up to the cool kids. i pretended to like music i really didn’t. it was all terribly awkward, and i still have those moments. once i grew out of that phase, in retrospect i felt that struggling to keep up with the cool kids was also a sign of weakness. character weakness. at some point, i learned that noncomformity was what was really cool, and then i lost interest in that too. the fact that i generally don’t appear entirely alt/indie/alternative on the surface is evidence of this struggle.
i obviously had issues with this “counterculture conformity” at burning man this year; it nagged at me all week. but one of the most uncomfortable areas this shows up in my life is regarding me & jay and the Big Question: why aren’t we married?
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there are many reasons, and some are too personal to discuss here. in general, though, there are several things about the idea of marriage that irk this part of me that hates the idea of doing anything the rest of the world condones and rewards even though it has serious flaws and negative impacts on our culture.
first, i don’t like the fact that having a wedding somehow validates a relationship, when in our current culture, weddings are basically disposable. i’m not even 30 and i have several friends who are already in their 2nd marriages. to me, weddings seem like they are more of a conformist act to gain approval of your relationship from everyone else, to show EVERYONE ELSE you’re serious.
of course the counter-argument to that is that it doesn’t have to be so – that you can make a wedding ALL ABOUT YOUR LOVE, you can tell eachother that the committment means to you, and promise to keep that committment, and forget what everyone else thinks it means. but still, it’s not so much the act of getting married that i don’t like, but how everyone views it. how, if we suddenly announced and engagement, everyone we know would suddenly see us differenlty. suddenly everyone would have more respect for what we’ve been doing the past 8 years. why should i care what everyone else thinks? you ask. because – if they think you’re buying into what they’re selling, even if you’re not, the pattern continues. perception is key.
i want to be clear that my unwillingness to get married has nothing to do with how much i love jay – for those who would suggest that we do not love eachother as much as those who are more formally committed because we haven’t tied the knot, i say: the fact that we’ve stayed together, lived together, breathed together, laughed together, cried together, slept together, worried together, loved together for the past 8 1/2 years WITHOUT being legally bound means a whole lot more to me. either of us could walk away any day, no strings attached, but we’d never even think of doing so.
and then there IS the actual having of the wedding. the possible financial and logistical nightmare aside, another reason i don’t like the whole thing is because of the “wedding industrial complex”, the ideas they’ve cultivated about what a proper wedding should entail, the myth of a perfect wedding for everyone little girl in america. i’ve not grown up dreaming of my walk down the aisle. i think matching bridesmaid dresses are ridiculous. i would never spend that much money on mediocre food.
sure, you can have an offbeat wedding and make it all indie and cool and DIY and only use all those old issues of Bride Magazine your friends gave you to create recycled confetti or whatever, but for me, it would still be saying “hey, i support this idea/institution” when, really, i don’t. i don’t support that fact that marriage is still only for 1 man + 1 woman, that it is viewed as a Christian institution, and i don’t support the idea that a marriage certificate means more than words and feelings in the eyes of most people. the gay marriage aspect is the part that most intersects with my thoughts stemming from V for Vendetta – the language from the homophobic future was not far off from what we hear GW and evangelicals on TV spewing about “sanctity of marriage” and it being a “pillar of our commUNITY”. interestingly, i don’t think about this subject much from the feminist perspective – the idea of marriage doesn’t bother me much as a WOMAN, perhaps because of where i live/who i live with; i think about it more in terms of humanity and consumption.
the blurbs written for ariel’s book by authors of other wedding-related books/sites make me uncomfortable. they seem double-edged. while seemingly shit-talking the “wedding industrial complex” (2 of them use that phrase) and encouraging women to express their unique, creative selves, those authors, and ariel, are still making money off that same wedding industry. they’re just creating a new niche for it: indie weddings. it’s still the same piece of paper at the end of the day, isn’t it? you can dress it however you want : goth, hippie, whatever : but it’s still part of the societal construct of weddings. even non-legal weddings (gay weddings) irk me in this way. why are you supporting the idea of something from which you’re being excluded?
while i do not doubt for a minute that the emotional value of these events is completely raw and human, it still seems odd to me that they are all formatted and packaged in such similar ways. swap out the white dress for a red one, the church for a nightclub, and suddenly you’ve escaped society’s expectations of you? i don’t think so. sure, you could argue that these people are attempting to redefine what marriage means, but to me they are talking about what it means to INDIVIDUALS, which, yes, is fantastic. here though, i’m talking about what i means to SOCIETY, and as long as you get that piece of paper from the government, it means what society says it means.
this is by no means a belittlement of my friends who are married, or the dedication they have to their spouses. some of them DID dream of their Perfect Wedding Day for years, and so i can’t deny them that happiness. but to me, the fact that they went through the marriage process means very little when i consider the value of their relationships.
while i am adressing this as a wide cultural issue, i realize that the decision to get married is complex, personal, and subjective. i do not mean to say that marriage is complete bullshit and REAL nonconformists would never consider it, and i would never ask anyone to defend their decision. but what i DO mean to say that this is how i feel, and i feel very alone in how i feel about it, especially since i know many super cool, very conscientious people who are highly aware of such cultural issues who’ve gotten married (including Ariel), so i feel insecure in why this is still such a thing with me when so many others seem to have “gotten over it” once they fell in love and/or found some other good reason to formalize their relationship. i realize that my perspective is not a popular one. i realize that why i feel that way has a lot of layers, some of which have nothing to do with love and marriage. but after seeing V for Vendetta last night, thinking much about hegemony and conformity, and then reading the blurbs about ariel’s book, i found myself twisting all these ideas around in my head again, and so here they are.
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Heck to the motherfucking yeah! I loved what you said about swapping dresses, etc. Weddings are based on the idea that women are chattel. Love has nothing to do with what a wedding historically reprsents. They are transfers of property. Indie weddings are no diff. than regular weddings. Yeah, the parties may be more fun, but the ideals that they spring from are the same. These people aren’t redefining marriage. They are buying into the system just as much as the next cat.
I want to hear your thoughts on V. Have you read the graphic novel?
I hear what you’re saying Amy, and I totally agree in many regards. In fact, the first chapter of Offbeat Bride is all about whether or not it’s even worth getting married, complete with a discussion of straights who don’t marry out of a protest for gay marriage equality, and a profile of a straight couple who had an offbeat wedding that didn’t involve them getting legally wed.
I totally respect the perspective, even if we made a different decision. We got married mostly because of health insurance and taxes. For us, getting married was strictly a financial decision, because the emotional decision to commit to each other had long-ago been made.
That said, I acknowledge that the book (and all for-profit products that espouse alternative, non-consumerist lifestyles) walks a fine line — it’s implicitly a part of the very industry that it critiques. It’s just one of the many of compromises and hypocrisies that I navigate in my career … daily. That said, I have no regrets about being a voice to say “If you’re going to do it, do it with awareness and intent.” Because people are doing it, not because they don’t have the same concerns that you share, but because they make a different decision about how to deal with them.
amy,
you always bring up such interesting discussions. i think you’re brave for sticking to your guns regarding your feelings about marriage. it’s easier to just conform. it’s easier to not have to answer the questions that you are inevitably asked by people who don’t understand why you would date someone for 8.5 years and not be married.
my boyfriend and i had a long debate about this on a roadtrip. our debate occurred when he said something about seeing himself having children before he saw himself getting married. my response was “uhhh…what? marriage comes BEFORE children, unless it’s an accident!” that’s what i grew up thinking and that’s what i firmly believed. yet, as we talked more about it, i began to question why i held that belief so strongly. was it really because i believed that marriage would make raising kids better/more secure/etc? or was it because i thought people would look at me strangely if we did it in a different order than we were “supposed” to.
his arguments focused more on the fact that having children and getting married are mutually exclusive things. that is, in his mind, the two things should be decided on independently and he felt that it was certainly possible for someone to feel ready to have children before he/she felt ready to get married. when i separated my emotions from the debate i actually agreed with him.
what i found scary about this whole debate was how my attitudes and perceptions had formed without me even realizing why i felt the way i felt. it made me realize that it is important for me to think carefully about why (and if) certain things are truly important.
i like your blog because you do ask yourself why you feel the way you feel. it’s a very enlightened way of moving through the world.
i totally agree, and thanks for provoking many thoughts in my head. i am so glad i am not the only one who feels this way (especially since all my other friends seem to be marrying or getting engaged lately)
it almost amazes me how as i get older the idea of getting married but especially PLANNING AND HAVING A WEDDING truly makes me want to puke! i can’t believe people put THAT much energy and money into something that lasts one day (one of my best friends did it recently and had a really kickass wedding but i got to see firsthand how much people put into it).
and i hate the very concept of “one day that is the best, most magical day of your life” and that girls are taught so young to look forward to it.
for one thing, how can anything built up in that way be anything but a letdown? i think over my lifetime i’ve learned that, for me, life and the magic therein is about the moments in between the things that are *supposed* to be great/important, more than anything else.
if i ever do it, it will be for practical reasons like tax breaks or health insurance or something, and the wedding itself would just be a DAMN good party with the requirement that everyone gets wasted in some way
and i don’t think my family would be invited… (after 8.5 yrs finn’s and my families still haven’t met, and it sounds weird but i LIKE it that way!)
i really like the general concepts of tradition and ritual, but why do all the traditions and rituals that are popular in our culture just turn me off sooo much?! i even hate going through things like graduation ceremonies.
it does *almost* worry me that i am SO EXTREMELY turned off by things that are overtly sentimental or lovey-dovey-gushy. i think this too is increasing as i get older. sometimes it makes me feel like a total weirdo compared to everyone else.
i like your point that it means even *more* to stay together that long without officially being married because we *could* walk away easily at any time.
as a last thought, it was really interesting in ghana trying to explain to people (mostly very christian religious) why do not want to get married or have kids. they were baffled by it.
Getting married really is about ease of getting things done. I recently bought a Prius, gave Mel my (slightly less beat up) Saturn and sold her (more beat up but beloved) Mazda. The car is still registered in my name because it’s a pain to switch it over. Whenever we do something like that, I wish we were married.
When I was in Las Cruces, I did see the flip side. One of my coworkers was already being (emotionally) abused by her bf, but she was so excited about getting married because for one day she would be the center of attention. I figured I could just make every day like that and not have to get married at all
Cruces was a depressing place that way with people who married because they were 18, horny, and didn’t believe in sex outside of marriage. I saw a lot of them when they were 3-4 years in the marriage and miserable, but they didn’t believe in divorce either, so what could they do?
very interesting viewpoints here. leah – that’s a great example you gave, of how sometimes separating the act of marriage from the other things assocated with it gives you a great perspective on what it might really mean to you. does marrage really benefit children in this society? now that we have DNA tests to prove parenthood, it seems to me that marriage is more about the financials than it ever was.
apparently, Brad Pitt has made the same declaration that he and Angie won’t marry until everyone can, and people are just chalking it up to another way to promote their do-gooder human rights image. but, both of them have been married, so i think they should get some credit.
i dont’t think it’s just do-gooder, “i’m more liberal than you” talk, which is what many people are saying about us straight white people who are objecting and/or refusing for politcal purposes (among others).
aurabelle – you and finn are pretty much the ONLY people i know who’ve been together for as long as me and jay, outside of a few people i knew back in Mich. who are still together. jay and i have been together for longer than most of our married friends, yet i don’t think our relationship gets the respect it deserves from a lot of people. it’s frustrating, but i don’t really care. my parents don’t care either, btw.
ariel – i hope you don’t, after reading this, find my support for you and your book insecere. i know you had to do a lot of evaluating of your personal beliefs when going through yoru book-writing process. i know your publisher has more power over the marketing and packaging than you do, and that if it weren’t being published as a book, what you wrote would have been published elsewhere in some great work like Bitch mag. as i haven’t read your book, i can’t speak to how deep it delves into these greater-society deliberations, but i’m sure you didn’t just brush them under the carpet. i look forward to getting my copy, and have recommended it to those friends of mine who are getting married i 2007.
So, I grew up in a gay family and when I was growing up I never cared about marriage. If not being married was good enough for those I was around and loved, it was good enough for me. And while Ariel and I decided to get married for practical reasons, I have to say that I found many aspects of our wedding to be wonderful. Simply because something is a societal tradition and one with which I have serious problems (who the fuck are you to tell my parents they can’t get married? being one of my problems:) doesn’t necessarily mean that one should reject it as opposed to redefining it. In fact, my parents encouraged it. Saying that indie weddings are no different than regular weddings is kind of ridiculous. Those people that buy into women being chattel are going to buy into it with or without a wedding. The ideals don’t even remotely compare. I can only speak to my experience, but my relationship is no different than it was before I got married. I feel so far outside of the marriage mainstream having gay parents anyway, (so does Ariel, and they did get married. Who is the chattel in that case, I wonder) buying into it doesn’t even feel remotely like a risk to me. If somebody treats you differently based your marriage status, so what? They will probably find some other meaningless facet of your personality to latch on to anyway. The smart ones (the ones you want to keep as friends) usually can treat you as you, and not as one half of a married couple.
dre, i think you have a great perspective on this issue.
what i struggle with is representation. while you, your gay family, and people in your community can understand where you’re coming from, those in other places do not. what they see is something different – when they see gay people participate in what has been defined as a straight activity/union, they see an undertone of acquiesence because you’re participating and accpeting their structure in some way or another.
this is a problem with a lot of forms of “reclamation” – from linguistic reclamation of formerly negative words like “nigger” by the african-american community to gay people having white weddings at city hall. some people will always still see that as a form of buy-in, not matter how hard or loud you proclaim your counterarguments, and i have a hard time, myself, wanting anyone to think i’m buying in, for any reason. i’m really hyperconscious about certain things like this.
why do i care so much about representation and culture perception on this issue? i’m not totally sure. this post was partly me working this out. thanks for your feedback and POV – it’s one that’s not heard often.
I totally respect not wanting to have other people see you buying into something you don’t believe in. I have that initial reaction to many, many issues. But as far as a reason to do (or not do) something, I’ve come to the conclusion that it hands too much power to those you are reacting against. The person who should define whether or not marriage is right for you is you and you alone. Maybe I’m a little bit too inclined to say ‘fuck what the rest of them think’, but you know, fuck what the rest of them think. Whatever conclusion you come to (or have already come to), I’m sure it will be true to your own beliefs.
i totally agree with you. i will say that ariel & andreas fall into the small percentage of friends i have who are married where i actually believe that their relationship will be meaningful, healthy, etc… but then, it was that way pre-marriage too. most of my friends who i’ve seen marry seemed truly doomed. (not necessarily doomed to get a divorce, but just doomed to have a pretty unhappy/dysfunctional relationship ultimately.)
have you ever read “against love” by laura kipnis? it sounds as though you might find it interesting (it’s not actually against love per se, just the relationship format)
For a non-conformist, you seem awfully concerned with what other people think about you. So you don’t want to get married — who’s forcing you? Those people asking obnoxious questions at family gatherings or work functions?
Here’s the truth: no matter what you do, no matter how you lead your life, there will always be people out there who will ask rude and inappropriate questions. If it isn’t “when are you getting married?”, it’s “when are you having children?” or “what do you do for money?” or “why don’t you get a real job?” or “wouldn’t you rather look pretty?” or “have you tried to quit smoking?”
Get used to telling those people to fuck off, because whether or not you ever get married, they are not going away. Do whatever makes you and your partner happy, and don’t waste your time feeling defensive about it.
this is sort of what i am talking about when i say that the representation can be terribly skewed:
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/09/25/BAGLALC2O51.DTL&hw=gay+marriage&sn=002&sc=901
“Two of the highest-profile same-sex couples in the country split up this summer, and their breakups immediately became fodder for opponents of such unions.
Julie and Hillary Goodridge, the named plaintiffs in the Massachusetts case that legalized same-sex marriage in that state as of 2004, announced in July that they had separated after two decades together. And in August, Carolyn Conrad and Kathleen Peterson, who entered into the nation’s first same-sex civil union after five years together, ended it.
“The separation of Julie and Hillary Goodridge is tragic not only for their daughter,” the Rev. Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition said in a statement released the day after the couple confirmed the separation. “But … they have clearly shown just how little they value the institution of marriage and provide a chilling look into what our nation faces if homosexual marriage is legalized elsewhere.”
not that these gay couples breaking up is any more of an insult to the “sanctity of marriage” than your average hetero-hollywood marriage debacle, but it’s seen as such.
to be clear: i am not against gay marriage any more than i am against straight marriage. any form of marriage, because of these issues at this particular point in time, i believe to be both a social and political act, not just a personal one.
as other topics on this blog have shown, i have a difficult time separating personal and political act for myself, so it’s difficult for me to understand how others seem to so easily, especially in matters of the heart. so many people who were once passionate about certain causes seem to give in when it comes to accomodating their own desires.
as for why i care what other poeple think – i strive to live by example. i don’t live by the motto “who gives a fuck what they think” – i care a great deal, actually.
at least brad pitt is with me on this one.
> as for why i care what other poeple think – i strive to live by example.
well stated. and i agree.
to think i’d find myself somehow standing here championing marriage, occasionally, is something i have to laugh about, because i used to think all those “oh yuck, how comformist!” thoughts, myself. and, like you, i still cringe very, very often… i can’t even bring myself to GO to burning man anymore. i gave up when all i could see through the fuzzy boots and hot pants were leather, feathers and dreadlocks.
regardless…
at least how i see it, yeah, a wedding, at least one that involves a gathering, IS a public announcement – why the heck else would you invite 200 of your family members and friends, otherwise? and if you don’t come from a DIY scene and don’t have a source of advice , what’s so wrong with checking out a book by someone who does?
i just came back from a completely DIY freaky-people wedding. what a blast, what a gift from two people – “here, let’s make a big party together and celebrate our love and our commitment!” it was really, really cool, especially considering the couple getting married had been living together for years. a marriage while, yeah, giving you that institutional piece of paper everyone else gets, is also a ritual – and ritual has a very important purpose in community.
as for ariel’s book, well, live and let live. the girl’s a WRITER for a living, for cryin’ out loud, and seems geared towards how-to, pop culture commentary, non-fiction sorts of things. she happened to pull off a fantastic DIY wedding and then wrote a book about how to go about it. to me, this seems no worse than, say, being a jewelry designer and writing a book on how to make your own.